Modelling the impact of structural flexibility of wheelsets and rails on the wheel-rail contact and the wear

Abstract

The wear occurring in the wheel-rail contact has a strong impact on the entire railway system consisting of the rolling stock and the infrastructure; essentially, the wear depends on the location of the contact area on the running surfaces and on the stresses acting in the contact area. Some combinations of wheel and rail profiles are known to be very sensitive even to small changes of the relative kinematics of wheel and rail, which can be caused not only by displacements of the wheelset relative to the track, but also by structural deformations of wheelsets and rails. The paper presents a refined vehicle-track model, in which flexible bodies representing the wheelsets and the rails are combined with a rather detailed wheel-rail contact model. It shows the modelling approaches, in particular the integration of the wheel-rail contact into the entire model, and explores the impact of structural deformations on the wheel-rail contact.